Heather Mooney – Green Racing Project Bloghttp://greenracingproject.com/blog
Tue, 08 May 2018 14:17:56 +0000en-UShourly1On Burnout, and Bye for Nowhttp://greenracingproject.com/blog/8378/on-burnout-and-bye-for-now/
Tue, 25 Apr 2017 23:10:51 +0000http://greenracingproject.com/blog/?p=8378As long as I can remember making conscious decisions in my life, skiing has defined it. I loved it more than anything else, prioritized school and the rest of my life around it. It defined my friends, my high school and college choices. I know I’m incredibly lucky to have gotten to make those choices in the first place, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Until now, my biggest #firstworldproblem fear was burning out of skiing. I was scared that one day this thing that I felt so much a part of my character and my life, might not matter to me. And here I am, on paper “burnt out” of skiing. I ended my season in February, and don’t plan to start training for next season on May 1. As someone who used to live for race days, I now couldn’t bear the thought of bringing myself to another start line. The day after that last race in Ishpeming, I made it through one hour of our two-plus hour distance workout, and hated every minute of it, and hated myself for hating skiing on a beautiful day.

Somewhere in the years of training logs and excel sheets, a switch flipped. An infinite passion and excitement for all the details of the process gave way to an external force, driven by the numbers, results, the terms other people were operating on, not my own. I lost touch with myself. I didn’t know why I was doing it, and that became crippling. What used to be the thing I looked most forward to every day, training, was the one thing I couldn’t wait to have behind me. And as I slipped further and further, I looked farther and farther from outside of me to solve it. And as I struggled more and more, it only compounded itself, to the point where I don’t even know what the connection is anymore.

That’s really scary to me, not knowing. Yes, skiing is only a sport, but it’s the sport I’ve chosen to build so much of my life around. To think I’ve grown out of it, or don’t care about it any more, feels like I’m negating part of myself. Maybe that’s part of growing up. Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe I haven’t.

I think skiing is still a part of me. But I have a lot of work to do to find where it begins, and why. I hope it brings me back to being an elite racer, because that is what I’ve valued for so much of my life. But I have to give myself the opportunity to be okay with that not wanting to make the Olympics. That’s the only way I’ll be able to see where my heart wants to go with it. Then, when I see the why, whether it’s pursuing world cup starts, or graduate school, or designing trail maps I’ll be able to do it from my whole heart. When I’m there, the hard things will be fun again.

In my parting, I’m immensely grateful to all off the Craftsbury community. To everyone who has shared an interesting conversation, supported me when I was down, pushed me in intervals, picked me up off the pavement (literally), offered a friendly smile, thank you. If there’s a place that’s an example of skiing mattering beyond our enjoyment of it, it’s here. I feel so lucky to have gotten to be a brief part of it. Thanks for making it so hard to leave.

Although it is only June, the second official training month of the new season, the Craftsbury Green Racing Project has been conducting extensive physical testing in May. The tests include the Canadian Strength Test, an uphill running time trial up local Mt. Elmore, a VO2 Max Test using a Concept2 Ski Erg, and a MOXY Test using a Concept2 Ski Erg. These tests will give us a very solid baseline of information that we plan to build on throughout the training season.

“Hit the ground running” is definitely a good phrase used to describe the Craftsbury GRP training this year. This hard effort and high intensity testing allows for a shorter “break-in” period of sometimes lackluster training in late spring and early summer that plague some Nordic skiers out there. It also increases the early focus, while providing individual goals for each skier to get to by the next testing block.

The Canadian Strength Test is a common standard for Nordic skiers to use. For those of you who are not familiar with the test, it is very easy to replicate if you choose to add it in your own training program to see if you are getting stronger over time. The test is as follows: perform as many pull-ups as possible in 1 minute, 1 minute rest, perform as many sit ups as possible for 1 minute, 1 minute rest, perform as many push ups as possible in 1 minute, 1 minute rest, perform as many box jumps as possible in 1 minute, 1 minute rest, perform as many bench dips as possible, 1 minute rest. The final score is calculated by adding up all of the numbers as they are except for pull-ups: multiply your number of pull-ups by 3.

Most Nordic skiers are familiar with an uphill running time trial. Nordies love to just get in that pain cave and test how mentally and physically strong they are, so what better way than running uphill as hard as possible? The Craftsbury team uses local Mt. Elmore, which is more an adequate for searching the depths of the pain cave. As calculated by a Polar V800 training watch, the uphill running time trial is 3.03km long and has 372 meters of elevation gain. It takes between 16 minutes to 23 minutes to complete depending on the age and ability of the athlete. The first half of the run is on a dirt road, while the second half is on a hiking trail. The last few pitches are exceptionally steep, making most runners debate about doing a fast hike or continuing to run. Sometimes putting pride aside and hiking actually is faster and less exhausting.

The VO2 max test was done in our coaches testing laboratory on a Concept2 ski erg with the PM5 monitor. We used the pace function of the ski erg to do a “step test” for each athlete. With a heart rate monitor on, breathing mask to calculate oxygen intake, and muscle oxygen saturation monitors taped on, the athletes started at an easy pace and every 90 seconds increased the pace. For example, start at 2:20 for 500m pace, then after 90 seconds go down to 2:10, then 2:00, then 1:55, then 1:50, etc until the pace cannot be maintained. This will create a max effort and thus max VO2 result. Here is a link to the VO2 max test for one of our athletes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2uRpea1sOM

The MOXY test is also done with a Concept2 Ski Erg with a PM5 monitor. With heart rate monitor, breathing mask, and MOXY monitors taped on, the athletes performed three 4-minute hard intervals with only 1 minute of rest in between each one. The pace was supposed to be relatively consistent throughout the test, so the first interval felt ok, but the third 4-minute interval wax extremely challenging to maintain. The MOXY monitors the oxygen saturation in the muscles. The test is supposed to measure how much oxygen is delivered to the muscles, and how well the muscles utilize that oxygen. A VO2 max was also taken from this test. Here is a link to a video of the test:

June continues a solid training program as we welcome three college athletes who will be training with us for the duration of the summer. Stay tuned for more updates from the Craftsbury Green Racing Project! And if you are not already, follow us on Instagram (@greenracingproject) and Facebook (Craftsbury Green Racing Project) for more information and pictures!

]]>Cedar is Fossil Fuel Free*!!http://greenracingproject.com/blog/7865/cedar-is-fossil-fuel-free/
Thu, 12 May 2016 15:24:50 +0000http://greenracingproject.com/blog/?p=7865For the past two years, Cedar has not used any oil for heating, although oil burners still remained installed in the building. Last week, the final oil burning furnaces were removed, as well as all of the plumbing, a symbolic marker along the path to carbon neutrality at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center.

Cedar has been heated by the central heating system–fueled by wood, solar hot water, and waste heat from the snow making generator–but until last week, the three oil burning furnaces still were hooked up, such that they could be turned on as back up (although they never were). Two pipes fed Cedar’s heat system, one from the central heating system, and one from the oil furnaces, with a valve that recently has remained turned off. Now without the oil furnaces, all of the distribution remains the same, just without that input to the system.

Last week, Eric, Lucas, and Ethan pulled all of this out, leaving an empty room in the basement that used to be devoted to the oil heat operation. The plumbing will be given away, and some of the tanks will be repurposed for solar hot water at Elinor’s House.

“The grey thing in the front is one of three big oil burners that provided the heat and hot water for Cedar. The round tanks behind it were used to store heat from the oil furnaces, some of these tanks are what we will reuse for solar.”-Ethan

*When we make snow, we do use fossil fuels to run the generators. So by using waste heat from the generators, it does still have a slight “fossil trail”.

(Ethan contributed reporting and photo).

]]>A Green day on the GRPhttp://greenracingproject.com/blog/7848/a-green-day-on-the-grp/
Sun, 08 May 2016 00:04:30 +0000http://greenracingproject.com/blog/?p=7848Like the summer training we do, a lot of the work we put in now towards Outdoor Center projects will pay off in later seasons. As we finish up our first week of “official” training, we’ve gotten going again on a few of these tasks, such as the raspberry fences that Caitlin, Emily and Alex put up this afternoon!

This morning, not pictured, but also in the vein of spring time work for later-date benefits, we helped with a community work day, mulching blueberry bushes at our neighbors’ farm, Browns, followed by collecting trash for Green Up Day on one of our rollerski roads in Greensboro.

Along with trees finally starting to bud, and the grass beginning to grow again, it was a very “green” day in Craftsbury. Tomorrow we’ll round out the week of training with a running time trial up Mt. Elmore.

“Alex Howe contributed reporting, and pictures”

]]>New Sign Projecthttp://greenracingproject.com/blog/7821/new-sign-project/
Wed, 04 May 2016 01:46:11 +0000http://greenracingproject.com/blog/?p=7821The past few months have seen a serious facelift around the Outdoor Center with addition of new signage built and installed by several members of the GRP. We hope this will facilitate more intuitive navigation around the many different buildings and activities the Center offers!

(Click to enlarge!)

]]>Crash Landings and Wooden Medals (or, my first year on the GRP)http://greenracingproject.com/blog/7797/crash-landings-and-wooden-medals-or-my-first-year-on-the-grp/
Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:47:17 +0000http://greenracingproject.com/blog/?p=7797Ski racing professionally has been a dream of mine since I was in elementary school. It was the “light at the end of the tunnel” of school, because in that case, it meant I got to be doing my favorite thing, all the time, without the nuisance of homework or things that I knew were good for me but that I didn’t like as much. As a result of many years of built up excitement, I had also built up a lot of expectations for how it would be, what it would feel like, how happy I’d be to be finally “there”. Rather than having to wait through class to go skiing or running afterwards, I imagined that I’d suddenly be able to spend my whole day in the exuberant feeling I had found previously in my few hours of ski practice. Little did I know that it was the context and balance of those other things that buoyed my excitement for skiing so much.

I do not love skiing any less now. I’ve just had a harder time finding my excitement for it this year. Plenty of people counseled me that the transition would be challenging, if only for the reason that I struggle with transitions, but I didn’t believe them. I thought of course I could defy the odds, that for me the first year out of college would be awesome. I’ve been skiing since I could walk, racing since I was six, keeping a training log since I was 13, and have raced in Europe since I was 16. I’ve been through transitions; I know enough that I shouldn’t have to have another year like my first year of college; I should be “better” than that by now. But, sure enough, I wasn’t, because it was a transition totally different from any of the others I’d experienced. The variables were different, and furthermore, I was closed minded to the idea that it even would be hard. Previously, the only thing that had changed was the format of how I went to school; everything else remained constant. Now, in Craftsbury, my life was suddenly structured by the thing I used to do in my “free time” and the things that used to be the main structure in my life, I now needed to create for myself.

I thought in this new life I was going to need to focus harder and more on skiing, because that’s what I was doing, that’s why I’m here, to get faster. I tried to shut everything out, and push harder. This was my job now, I needed to approach it with a tougher mindset than just a “college kid”. It turns out that was the death of me. I got tired, and frustrated, and had nothing else to turn to, where previously I subconsciously relied on lots of other intellectual things. It took me a whole year of suffering to realize I was missing a basic structuring of my life that made me feel good. I was floundering to find any order whatsoever, one that I had very much taken for granted in the structure that school provided. My life wasn’t school, or skiing, or any one specific thing then, but they coexisted in a way that made me happy.

Now, I was trying to make one of these many pieces, skiing, fill up the whole routine that was my life, discounting the necessity of other aspects. I wanted to become my best at skiing by letting it become all encompassing. But, to my dismay, “that ain’t me”. To be able to bring myself to skiing with the same enthusiasm that defined me in my career to this point, I needed to stoke the fire elsewhere too, something I totally ignored in trying to fit myself into the “pro skier life” this year.

One of my previous coaches recommended that I just had to hold tight and make it to the end of my first 12-18 months out of college, still happy, still skiing, and I’d be ok. I didn’t really know what he meant by that, and I really didn’t want to hear it, that I was going to be miserable for a whole 12 more months, but I trusted it, since it was a promise that I’d be in a better place eventually, and that sounded a lot better than the prospects of it not getting better. I understand better now, or at least have given my own description to it, that by “then” I’d make it through my own rebalancing. All the pieces were still there; it would just take me a while to reorganize them.

Objectively, the year was not that bad. I got to stand on the start line proud in the green suit that was frequenting the podium, I raced at U23s World Championships and OPA Cups, and had some good sprint qualifiers. On paper, it shouldn’t have been any different than the year before. I trained nearly the same number of hours, and even less intensity, I shouldn’t have been as tired and wrecked as I was.

Subjectively, I was seriously struggling. I wasn’t happy. It was obvious in my comportment as I showed up- the one who was frequently late, constantly crashed on her roller skis, and couldn’t make it through a 3 hour rollerski workout. This only added to the frustration, as this wasn’t the me I knew. Having prided myself to this point as one who routinely had my life in order, for the first time in my life, I resembled more of a “shit show”. It took me about until February to have any sense of reordering, and it took all of my deflated self to just focus on what I could control. I made it through the season, and salvaged what could have been a lot worse.

So what am I doing about it? What changed from the floundering freshman-at-life that showed up last May, to a self-proclaimed more-sure-of-herself-Heather now? Craftsbury is in an awesome place with world class athletes emerging every where you turn, and I’m excited to be a part of it. I’m excited to feel like I’m making my own life routine again. I’m beginning to find my niche in Center work projects, feeling like my skillsets can be useful in a way that I’m happily absorbed and feel good about for their greater purpose in our small Outdoor Center community. I am also really lucky to have part time work at Pete’s Greens, a way to use my mind and body in a totally different way from skiing, toward something I believe in, the idea that “Vermont Can Feed Itself”.

I started out writing this blog, intending to write about the places I got to race, a summary full of pretty pictures of my experiences of my first year of what I hope will be many living the dream on the GRP. Despite training in Austria, Utah, racing in Montana, Idaho, Michigan, Romania, Germany, Italy, the formative parts of the year for me were the emotional ones. I feel silly that my conclusions of my first year as a “pro skier” are something so ethereal; I would love to be able to say I overcame all these physical challenges and am a changed body with new strength or technique. For me though, it was the emotional hurdles of re-learning the basics of what keep me going as a happy person, recreating a structure that supports my passion for skiing and drive to reach my potential as a racer and person.

The most exciting, (or maybe just best documented), of my many skinned knees this year…

“Almost, maybe next time.” (Reese Brown).

]]>First Impressionshttp://greenracingproject.com/blog/7099/first-impressions/
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 23:08:36 +0000http://greenracingproject.com/blog/?p=7099I’ve only been at Craftsbury full time for only two weeks now, and I am so happy to already feel like I have a new home. I knew nearly everyone on the ski side of the team before coming, had known Pepa since I was a young junior, and had been to Craftsbury on countless races trips and training camps, but I still didn’t know what to expect in moving here and joining the GRP. I knew about all the pieces but had no idea what it would feel like putting them all together.

Any question was quickly resolved as I immediately felt at home and welcomed by the team. A big part that contributed to this feeling was a sense that everyone has a place and purpose that is very much their own. I could see everyone contributing in their respective niches. Whether taking care of the animals, working on trails, working in the garden, or collaborating on the new cabins etc, it was immediately clear to me how each individual does have a purpose besides strictly athletic ability.

In racing, we often share similar goals, we all want to be really fast, and it’s easy to feel like we’re all competing for shares of the same thing, whether it is on our own team or nation-wide, trying to get spots on trips, the national team or the world cup. There’s only so much of the pie and if you have some of it, then somebody else has less. But by way of the work we do in return for our spot here, it is pretty cool to see how each person’s unique interests and abilities work together to make the Craftsbury “pie” bigger and better for everyone, rather than competing for space.

My biggest apprehension in coming into life as a “professional” athlete was the balance of being able to focus on getting faster, without it over consuming me as a person. Upon beginning life on the GRP, it has been reassuring to see right away my teammates’ strengths and interests outside of training, and the mutual importance of those aspects of them. Seeing the rest of the team appear so well balanced in their other contributions to the Outdoor Center has been inspiring to me, hoping that I too can develop my place and add to the balance as they do.

Having the built in opportunity to contribute to something else here is more than a safety net to mental sanity, but rather feels like a driving force that’s really unique about this team and greater Craftsbury Outdoor Center community. It is a good reminder of how any kind of successful team operates, dependent on the different characteristics that each person brings, contributing to a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. For that reason, I’m so excited to be welcomed to this team, thanks for having me!

On the training side of things, we’re happily enjoying an easy week, helping with the BKL camp, after several weeks of hard training. Here’s a photo summary of the past week, taken from our instagram posts. Be sure to follow @greenracingproject if you don’t already for a peek at the pieces that don’t make it to the blog.